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Beginning Map-Making Guide (old)
This page is out of date, just kept for backup purposes. -Fulano Beginning Map-Making Guide - By Markkur These are guidelines and not etched in stone. An assumption is made that a new map-maker has a PC that is 'middle-of-the-road 'in Stats. It is also assumed that it will be a 'single-player, single-mission map' that can be modified for other gaming-modes later. Map Size In selecting Your map size, if you want lots of trees and animations, etc, and also want an 'underground' , then select nothing larger than 'large' with normal or smaller being better. This has to do with your PC and the games A.I.and processing speeds. Not having an underground, does make picking the larger maps i.e. "Huge" valid for decent game play. Other factors concerning this are of course number of players/factions. The map-editor has a desired limit of no more 8 towns on the map. Again this is a Gameplay-speed issue. So, if you want to have more, then cutting back on 'animations' can help. Decorating and filling the map with fixed-objects like rocks, craters, dirt/sand-trees, mountains etc. reduce background processor workload. Map Editor {overview} Note: There is a glitch with the Map Editor that can make the 1st map you open...blur. To get around this make a small map and name it "test". Do nothing with it, just save it. Open this map first, each time when wanting to work on a map. The second opened map's surface is always clear. Note: After making the "test-map", you will have to exit the Editor the first time. Once back-in, open the test-map and then make a new map and it will have a blur-free surface. On the program screen, I always have the minimap window at upper right. and the Tool panel at lower right. I toggle back and forth with the Object list panel (left-side) depending on what I am doing at the moment. I only have the ObList up if I am working on individual objects i.e. color or checking ownership etc. At the top-right of the M.E. program are 5 tabs. I am only going to list and discuss what I use. 'File' Reload I use when I make ambient lighting changes in the 'map-properties'. Edit Rotate-object I use R on the keys. This makes the trigger-cell more or less accessable, depending on what is nearby. Level-Terrain under object I use this for all objects at times but mines and buildings always. This is good to do at the end of making a map to ensure the trigger cell (green) can be triggered by a hero. View Show-grid ''This is a good aid to see the slope of the land surface when using the 'Smith'-tool. ''Show Passability This reveals the used cells in red and also the 'green'trigger-cells. Masking is also shown in a dull orange color. Tools Center Camera, Top Camera To see straight down. At angles in 3D. some things are hidden. All three View buttons are here. for the tool windows. Note: Use the long toolbar with all of the icons, for any and all of these functions. Warning: Whenever placing objects on the map, unless it IS for a certain player #, make sure you have not bumped 'player-none' to another player-number other than 'None'. I share this because if you do not watch this constantly, when playing your map for the first time, you could have a team own many more things than they are supposed to at start. Also when placing objects be warned; sometimes for whatever reason; "Two of that object can be placed". I think I had a crash for this reason.. I don't know what causes it but an extra treasure chest is no big deal but an extra level 7 to fight early on to get an artifact, can be to 'Balance'...even if your game does not crash. Map Surface Set-up Remember to zoom-out to see the whole map surface to layout the map as explained in the manual. I like to use the terra-skin 'weeds' found under the filter 'Dirt' to mark where woods will be, the dormant-grass for hills, and a 'Rock' skin under 'Grass' or 'Orcish' for mountains. At starting out, I also like to mark where towns are going to be with a skin that is distinct so I can easily reference the town to gage distances between towns, portals etc. I like to use one of the 'sand' skins like 'wetsand' to mark where portals are going to be placed and spots to have a shipyard.(This helps you to easily see these places, you can change them to another skin when you've finished) My first thoughts in making a map are about logistics. Having some balance in the distances that factions have to travel to get to similar places/purposes. Or, if I want a faction to have an advantage or disadvantage in distance, easily seeing the colors of skins on the map helps me quickly gage differences. Using the skins in whatever fashion you choose to associate with map objects, helps you to clearly see the 'world you're creating'. Once I have my skins applied then I think 'water'. now I know I've already said 'shipyard'. Your order will vary to your preference, the point is do what keeps the 'big picture' clearest in your head. To the seasoned veteran map-maker this sort of thing is a no-brainer but I've found that I love to make the much larger maps so this fundamental stuff helps me keep things straight. I dislike it when I have a map that is beginning to create me instead of me creating it The Land First notice any tile you click on; it has an XY location and H value = "Height" displayed at bottom right of the map window. Roads are an important aspect of maps. On different maps, I have placed them in two ways. I recommend placing them "Before" bulking up a map with hills and mountains, so they can be used to guide where the land rises or falls. But it is also valid to make land and then make the roads follow the land , much like what happened for centuries on the earth: but starting out, this is the harder route. Once you are good with tools it does not matter. You have three very good tools in 'Bulk', 'Dig' and'Smith'. Bulk and Dig do just what they suggest and Smith is the tool that smoothes the land's surface. Make a little map to practice on and set the brush to size 7 and 'Bulk-up' a big area. How you move the mouse will impact how the land grows. And it grows very uneven. "Zoom-in, at times, to make sure you are seeing what you need to. If you have 'holes' that are more shallow, switch to a smaller brush size and build them up, then go back to the larger size. Once you have an area at the height you desire (H) than use the Smith-tool. This evens all the rough stuff. But you have to be careful, because if you want some jagged-edges around a precipice then this tool will knock it off if you go to the edge, so zoom-in to see where to stop 'Smithing'. (Remember to use the "Grid") If you overshoot and knock off those fangs you wanted? switch to #1 or #3 brush and bulk it back up. Raise and Lower 'Raise' raises the land a notch. You can do this as much as you want. 'Lower' just takes it back down again, say, in places you have made a mistake. Raise, I discuss further 'in Bridges' and 'Lower' I discuss further in the water section. Note: Brush size can impact what you do. i.e. If you raise one Size 7 square, you will only raise the next smaller size inside it, with the #5 brush and so-on. Same thing going back down. Note: I use these two functions mostly when making bridge-landings. But I have used them to make step pyramids. I do not use them much for the land because of the lines that appear that cannot be skinned. Quick, varied Plateaus: I like to use the #3 and bulk-up a few different spots to various H-heights/values, in a region that I am elevating. Then I switch to #1 and use 2 or 3 spots on the same mound. One dead center and another midway and the last near the edge. In each case, creating a small block,"with the plateau button and #1 brush" (once you have the three elevations you can switch to larger brush sizes to spread them out) at those different elevations. Since I have put a few of the bulk spots around the region I am working on with an overall picture of the layout in my mind, this approach really makes it easy to get extremely varied landscape elevations... quickly. i.e. I started in the North with snowy elevations at 30-40 H, and stepped down gradually or rapidly in places, taking the land 'down' to the southern coast. Note: Use the 'smith ' button to level off the rough edges. Be careful with this, the different brushes (1-7) sizes work accordingly. Mountains Under the object list of "Grass" there are three mountains and two hills. You can put these directly on your mountain range line in random fashion, along where you have targeted the surface with your rock-skin. Place them by remembering to change 'position' as they are placed by using the "R" key to rotate into one of four angles. Overlap them at times to make denser areas of the range. Once your mountain range is filled then you can go to the tile-brush again and select from 1-7 size depending how wide the range is and use the "bulk button" to build up each mountains or hills "height". At any time just use the "dig" button to take a little of the top. Changing brush size also adds good visual variation. Note: Since there are very few "pre-given mountain objects to place, I tend to use these much later in the process. In other words. I use the 'plataeu method' above to make my mountains and just 'cap-off' here and there with the gimmes. The different 'rock-skins' look like mountain-surfaces to me anyway, Even when starting with the gimmes I always came back through and matched connecting terrain to them by using the 'rock skin'. You can use different rock-skins for different surface textures. The 'sandrock' makes great hills and mountains on sand. By the way. There should be a good mixture of grass and dirt hills. Tip about mountain ranges: Once you have your ranges and have made them create long roadways between towns, you can, at given points, use the 'zero' brush to create a' tight canyon'. Be warned it takes your work down to "ground-level" and if you have built very high elevations, zero is a long way down. Guard this passage-way with a Lv7-monster or greater that can only be defeated much later in your game. You can do the same with "dig" but it's a lot more work. Water and Bridges. Adding water to your map can be done in two ways on the surface level. You can select the brush choice 'lower' and the brush size 1-7 and remove the land. Water with waves remains to create your rivers and seas. You can also select in the 'tool-panel',the tile-brush filter "Rivers", then pick 'water','lava' or 'bog'. Using any of these on a land surface (terrain and underground) "lowers the land with the chosen liquid" If you want an area of a "bog" to have a few passable spots then you will need to use the passability check to see where the river or bog is "solid-red". You may have to 'erase' here and there, leaving a few spaces only lightly touched but not enough to make the red-line solid and that leaves places for an adventurer to cross. If you want the river, bog or lava to be a solid barrier, then you have to make sure that the entire thing is two spots of red...wide or use 'Mask'. When using the 'lower' method, the river/sea bottom will be whatever skin the land was that you lowered. Depending on the ambient- lighting of your map you can change the skin of the river bottom to good visual effect. I like to use one of the 'conquest skins', they look very good in the sun. If you are going to make the terrain map lighting dark, don't bother with this. You cannot change the look of water made with the 'Water' tool, nor the 'Lava'. But 'Bog' IS impacted some to good effect with the 'roots' "skin spotted in here and there under nearby trees" or by changing to lighter or darker 'dirt'. Note: If you use both methods on the map, they will not match when they join. Underground you only have the Water/Lava/Bog tool to use for rivers and sea etc. The 'Lower'tool + #3-size brush is used to lower the land. Bridges are a little tricky at first. The parts to a bridge are found in 'Grass Objects' in two parts, the middle section and end section. There are two different color of bridges to use. Place them directly on land. Use however many middle sections to span (using R to join them) and end cap them. Then at each end, set the brush to size #7 and use the tool 'raise' once, at each end of the bridge. I make the white-box showing the brush-cursor, end at the first pylon/statue, outward "away from where the water will be". If you tilt the map with your mouse, you will see the bridge end is still hanging in the air. Switch to brush size#5 and 'bulk' up the land under the bridge end several times and then switch to size #3, center and bulk till you see the ground start to overlap the bridge end, Switch the brush to 'dig' and click once to lower the land for a clean bridge end. You will need to use the 'ramp' tool to ramp the land squares you made so the bridge can be accessed at each end, unless you raise more land on the map. After you've done this to both ends, run your river water under all of the middle-bridge-supports. Connecting the two levels 1. On your map, place Subterra-gates from Object Filter "All terrain objects" wherever you want to go down to the underground. 2.Click on "view underground" on toolbar or under the "view tab". Wherever you have a Gate entrance above, click 'view underground'and using brush #3 AND 'lower' Lower the area under the gate above. Switch to terrain skins and choose 'subterr' and change the surface skin of the new area. Now you can see it on your mini-map. Go around and repeat for all gates on the upper level to have a corresponding lower level area. Once you've finished you can see where all of the 'exits' now need to be for placing the object 'Subterra gate exits' Also found in the Filter "All Terrain objects" 3,Now place an exit in each of the new areas.Then make sure you have passability-on. I like to have the upper and lower parts of a gate match at XY. Placing your cursor on the green trigger of an object shows you the location in XY coord. at lower right of your map screen. I make them match by moving my 'exit' where it needs to be and also make it face the same direction using the 'r' key. This is optional. They will work regardless. 4.Now you have entrances and exits all over the place but they are all by default numbered 0. This means they are not seperated into 'sets'. You have an object properties tab on the toolbar. If you click on it after selecting one of the gates, the value 0 is what will be shown. Keep this simple. If I have two gates, both have a top and bottom (entrance and exit) The first one is in player one's area. So, I change 0 to 1 for both parts of that gate and change 0 to 2 for the other gate. Rule for me I never use the default 0 because whenever you save your map after working on it, errors are listed. If a gate with a zero comes up on that list, than I know I have a double gate situation and look at the listed XY of the problem gate and I know where to go to delete the extra gate. 5.Strategies of placement are all up to you but I advise you coming up with an easy way for you to keep your gate numbers clear in your mind. Since lots of gates are not usually preferred I will use player numbers to help me keep things straight as I just explained. Lets say I have 4 players on the map and each has 3 gates in their area. Then I label those gates in this fashion 1.11.111, and so on. If the map had 8 factions...same thing. 1,11,111 to 8,88,888. I would have 24 gates all seperately identified. Portals ''' Portals are different than gates in that they can be on the same level on the map. Also you have 'two-way' and 'one way'. With a two-way you use '2' objects called "Two-way-portal" and for the "One-way portal" you have two parts like a gate does, with an entrance and an exit. The same rules apply in identifying gates. They will be default 0 when first placed. You have to give them a unigue number. Make a list of 'used numbers' if you need to to refer back to as you go along, whatever to help keep things clear. This can get pretty difficult to track, if you don't plan well and you have lots of Gates and Portals on your map for different purposes. Note about Portals. You can have 1 'One-way' entrance and 2 'One-way' exits. or Three 'Two-ways' to link 3 spots on the map and much more if you choose. However, in each case you have to identify each by the same number in that group, and use new numbers than all other previously placed groupings. '''Underground I chose this order because if you did the last section you have portals and can now design where they lead. The order is not important. I have also made my entire-underground with all objects and the last thing I did was place 'gates and portals'. Whatever is easiest for you. ONLY "#3 brush' and 'lower' will clear away areas...underground. When on the upper map using 'lower' will take you down to water. It will not do this in the underground. To have rivers, you have to use the water brush. Lava and Bog are also selections. 'Crags' is the 6th Brush Tool at far right of the Tool-panel. You can change the wall texture of the underground in places or all over with one or all of these eight choices. To try it, pick one of the Dwarven 4-8 and move your cursor along the walls and they are changed to that selection. Note: Some of the Dwarven-crags have spaces that you can put various fire objects inside.(Remember this when you come to the point-lights section) Underground usage. I have lowered and used almost all of it on some maps while others I will just do small areas for specific purposes. For another Town, Level-up areas, Artifacts, short-cut-passages, or Additional resources. Some combination of all of that. It's up to you how much or how little and for what purpose but remember to place mostly 'fixed objects' for better gameplay. Remember also about the Editor having a check-map issue with more than 8 towns on map. I can only assume this is an A.I. issue. But if you have an awesome PC, and want to try having twice that number or even more. Go for it. You can always remove some later if need be. Point-lights/Colors Reminder...What ever "ambient-lighting" you pick for your map, it will impact how your work below will appear. You can use some very dark ambient settings or Fog and Night settings, if you introduce your own effective lighting scheme. Any 'object' that you place on the map can be a light source. Open the map properties tab and expand its window to the right about a third of the way across the screen. This enables you to see all cood.-lines-XYZ for entering values. When this view is first opened it displays all map properties but when you click on a single object on the map the list gets very short. In that short list for an object, is a line called "pointlights", Right click and "Add" and you will see "location and color" settings treed in X, Y and Z values. In the first subgroup (Pos.) what value you enter determines the height of the light's origin. If there is no value in this line not much happens even with color entered below. To give you an idea, I enter 5 at Z for 'crystals' in passage-ways in the undergound. I like the way the light shines up but you can choose what ever value you prefer for any object. I use '1' for warrior tombs because they are right on the ground. I use 2or3 at Z for mines and sawmills. I find that 12 is very good for 'Towns' as in the Dungeon's Lady. You just have to zoom in a see how your lighting parameters look on the buildings etc. Now I pick my color. I have seen where very long decimal values are given, as in .501961 at "Y" with zero at X & Z and is a Dark Green. But I will just enter .6 and the color is the same. If I enter .8 or 1 then the green becomes brighter. The higher the value the brighter the color. I.E. i like to use 'white light' for neutral buildings such as stables or war machine factories. I place the light height at "2 or 3 in the upper Z" and ".7 to 1 values at each X,Y and Z." The brightest being X=1,Y=1,Z=1. If you use .7 at each, then the light will be a softer white...more gray. The last line under 'color' is 'Radius' and this determines how many tiles the light will project outward. A normal value is 20-25, say for a crystal but you could use only one and put this value at 100. However I tend to use 15 for mines around towns and for a small object like a sign or or Idol of Fortune a yellow color looks good at a radius of only 5. That makes the object have it's own color but not affect the objects around it. Unless of course you want that. Note: For simplicity I tend to just use "1" as an entered value at "color = X-Y-Z". Since we have 8 factions here are my quick colors. Red (X=1,Y=0,Z=0) Blue (X=0,Y=0,Z=1) Green (X=0, Y=1,Z=0) Teal (X=0,Y=1,Z=1) Purple (X=1,Y=0,Z=1) Orange(X=1, Y=.6,Z=0) Yellow(X=1,Y=1,Z=0) and Brown(X=.6,Y=0,Z=0) Changing values changes the light and it is fun to experiment. Help Tip from Mike80d: Also in the Map Properties list are the 'players'. Here, you can set the 'faction color'. This is indeed splitting hairs but I like to do this regardless. A Wizard has a mostly 'Teal' vapor-trail that follows him/her as they level-up. Why not make that faction 'Teal' what ever player number it is on my map? Player 6 is Teal by default so if a faction has to be Teal?, then this makes sense to me. Player 1 is Red but I prefer the Inferno to be Red instead. It is not important 'what' you choose to light-up, what matters is the purpose you desire. I will select "Rocks' from 'Water Objects' and use those to light-up dark areas of the high seas. I also like to use the buoys , ships, mermaids or sirens for effect. This light-work is AWESOME. Masking. You have a brush-selection called masks. The purpose of this is to make a tile inaccessable. So, if you want to insure that a monster cannot get be got past without fighting it or a border guard cannot be side-stepped then mask to the edge of them. Another purpose of masking is making a hero use the winding roads you've made. The A.I. will find the shortest route to get where you are telling your hero to go and if that means cutting off through the sparse woods etc. and bypassing the road it will. As I explained about balance in gameplay...distances matter, so "making heroes use your roads" enforces your map layout. Another thing that masking does is keeping heroes from walking up mountain-sides. Unless you want that to be part of the fun, you won't want it normally. Again, the A.I. will find the shortest route and it does not know those tiles are a mountain. A very important reason that I mask alot now, has to do with the map's performance. I have nothing to prove the following theory except for some large maps that seem to play better now, than my older large maps. If the A.I. as I think it does "see's all playable tiles", then masking in a sense makes tiles "not seen" they are not accessable, so they don't get counted in the possibilities of movement. Much of a map surface is just divisions like, woods, water mountains etc., obstacles that have to be gone around. So I am guessing that when you mask all of those areas, in a real sense you are making the map smaller. If PC performance is not an issue, a good thing that I've learned to do is choose a larger map size so "distance of travel" can be greater to prolong the build-up of Heroes before battle (my desire)and therefore masking a lot more un-needed surface. Whenever you check for "passability" you will see red. When doing this and you have masked you will see the masking In dull-orange too and both combine to show you what can be reached and what cannot. I will mask a "blocking region" first, without an object placed yet. When I use the passability check I can see where the masking is and then I can select grass objects or sand objects etc. and pick some things to go into that masked region to "fill-in-some". I don't want to use lots of moving objects like grass-trees and bushes since they affect gameplay but I use some and also use lots of non-moving objects. Dirt trees are dead and don't move. Rocks, bulked up hills, craters, lots of single trees with a few tree-groups here and there, seems to work fine and the result looks acceptable. You have to be careful whenever masking near places to visit. And always take a good look around the map when you're nearing the end of making it . You don't want to have artifacts or buildings have masked over trigge- tiles(green). You also want to remember this if you move things for some reason. One other thought. You may have previously masked an entire wood or mountain. You can always go in and unmask a line to a small square and put some goodies there,in an out-of-the-way-place. Various Issues 1. 'Creature Stacking' is easy to do. Have open the object list panel and the window of the panel stretched to the right past "creatures" in that list. Click on the creature you want to make a 'army' instead of a single creature. You see the 'Additonal creatures line' and then right-click on the line to "Add" to it... a subfolder appears with the creature selection box,..pick the creature you want to add to the first stack. Repeat for more creatures in the one army. Note:Creature names will be different. Note: You can also edit creature properties. 'Mood', 'Amount' and 'amount is fixed or grows' 2. Copying To save time, you can 'copy objects'. In the case above, if you want balance in "neutrals defending like objects" then copy and paste more of the 'neutral creature army' you made. i.e guarding neutral towns or time-saving portals. Be patient, my copy function is fickle so stay with it, like clicking on different spots on the map to 'reset the paste-function'. 3. Random creature dwellings with random towns. This is subject to change but so far I have not been able to link one with a random town nearby. i.e. I set the RCD to player 2 near it's random town and they did not match. This may be what you want to have happen anyway. I have to test this further. 4. Regions are used for scripting and triggers. I will post the links. 5. The random map generator is a good time-saver if you want a new map to play quickly. But I advise spending some time on it by tweeking the map. Unless you want your players all having great morale and luck, remove all or most of those 'bonus objects' from the RG map. One other issue with me is what I call "rushing". Every map I've generated seems to have another built-in condition. Portals between factions are always too close for my tastes. You will need to make a portal map and re-assign them. Unless of course you want things over fast. 6.Using the mouse in making a map is a serious pain. When placing objects on the map; I have to switch back and forth between the objects button and the terrain button. That's how I reset it to pick something else from the list or to switch to modify an already placed object after...placing objects. 7. Most objects have the "owner box" available in "editable properties". I am not sure why this is with some of them i.e. a fountain or well? I can only guess it may have to do with "scripting" but I always ensure all neutral objects are set to 'player none' if only for A.I. reasons/guesses. 8. Level Terrain Function is under Edit or also on toolbar. If you have made a map that has a pretty "sloping surface" in spot where you want to place an object, you can use this to make it look better on the ground. Map Pictures Two picture types are available for the map. 'PWL' is the picture on the monitor that is viewed during map-load and 'thumbnails' are the small ones that are seen when looking at the map's description from the custom map selection screen. El-Chita has provided this link to "The Heroes Round Table site" and the provided guide. http://www.celestialheavens.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4191 Fuir's guide http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/modding_wiki/mapmaking:add_pwl_and_thumbnails Modding http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=24429 Scripting Krono's guide - Beginner Scripting Link http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/modding_wiki/scripting_tutorial:basic] Testing your map It is important that you check and recheck your map. Testers may be hard to find. However it is best if you can get a small group to provide feedback regarding all aspects of the map. Objectives, working scripts, the basic's like "accessability", the look and feel of regions, balance issues, validity of new-ideas etc. In a nut-shell, every facet from the Duhs to the most complex, needs reviewed as much as 'possible'. The more difficult the goals/scripts etc. the more important the testing becomes. I am pretty safe working on my own if I am making a map in the H3-Pre-WoG fashion but even that's is not assured. Anything beyond that limited scope, multi-testing becomes much more important. H5ME is a old dog now that growls and bites, so don't be surprised if posting for testers you only get a couple. Good enough. Heads-up. I've seen reviews written at map-sharing-sites like Maps4Heroes and too often they are far-too-arrogant. So have a "thick-skin" when sharing a map, dismiss obvious preference's but seek the 'constructive negative-feedback' that will improve you as a map-maker. EDIT = Spelling and format 12/8/10 Have Fun, Markkur